West Nodaway

The West Nodaway R-I Board of Education met in open and two closed sessions on February 8.

During the second closed session, the board voted to not renew High School Principal Roger Johnson’s 10-month 2017-18 school contract. The roll call vote was Bernie Farmer, Amanda Walker, Billy Koch and Troy Brady voting to not renew; Brian Beason and Jason Hull voted yes.

During the first closed session, Jacob Sunderman was hired as the 2016-17 assistant baseball coach. Elementary Principal Holly Brady’s 10-month 2017-18 school contract was renewed with a unanimous roll call vote.

The second reading and approval of the 2017-18 school calendar was made. Students will have 170 attendance days for a total of 1,122 hours and teacher contract days are 181 days.

A grant has been obtained to help with the second year of Jennifer Downing’s training to be certified as a Spanish teacher. WN and Downing are working with Northwest. Downing’s training is being expanded to include intermediate and advanced levels.

Johnson urged the board members to get on Twitter and follow West Nodaway at @WNRockets. The school is also looking at doing a Facebook page that will cover academics as well as athletics.

Three board members and Superintendent Shannon Nolte met with their North Nodaway equivalents to work on cooperative sports. Head coaches were included in the meeting.

The teams will have common practice times with the schools looking at 3:50 to 5:30 pm practice times for softball, volleyball and football.

Discussion was held on becoming an affiliate-registered school which would allow sixth graders to play junior high sports. This would affect the band program because the seventh and eighth grades would not be allowed to play at high school band contests. Nolte told board members that they need to decide as a board what they want to do.

The board approved changing the Nodaway Valley Bank signature card by removing Joseph Moore and adding Jason Hull. The certificates of deposit schedule was restructured and renewed in a second motion.